The Flemish Parliament on Wednesday approved a new variant of the ‘Wonen in eigen streek’ (‘Living in your own region’) decree that had been partially annulled in 2013 by the Constitutional Court following appeals by Francophones.
The new law allows municipalities with high property prices to reserve land or homes for people with a connection to the municipality. Opposition parties Vlaams Belang and Vooruit voted with the majority, Groen abstained and the PVDA (Labour) voted against.
Under the decree, certain local authorities will soon be able to intervene in the housing market. If housing prices in a municipality rise sharply, it will be able to intervene financially to reserve plots of land or houses for people with a link to the municipality. According to the Flemish government, the new scheme should be sufficiently robust in legal terms.
The aim, according to Flemish Minister for the Periphery Ben Weyts (N-VA) and Housing Minister Matthias Diependaele (N-VA), is to “erect a barrier against social evictions” in expensive municipalities where people who were born and raised there find it difficult to buy their own homes.
According to the N-VA ministers, this is an “urgent and real problem” that arises particularly in the Flemish periphery of Brussels.
The new scheme comes with a set of conditions. Only the most expensive Flemish municipalities and a few towns will be allowed to adopt the priority policy, which allows them to intervene financially to the tune of 50-100% of the property’s land price. The developer has to sell the land or part of it at the appraisal price.
According to Minister Diependaele, some 90 municipalities would be eligible for this scheme, which only applies to new subdivisions or total renovations comprising at least five residential units.
Buyers must meet three conditions to be eligible: they must be registered in the municipality concerned or in a neighbouring Flemish municipality for at least five consecutive years within the last ten years; they must not yet own any other property and they must have a salary below a threshold still to be determined.
Minister Diependaele mentioned a ceiling of €45,000 for a single person and €70,000 for a couple.
If the property has been for sale for more than nine months, the criteria lapse and the property becomes accessible to everyone once again.
People who buy a house through the system must occupy it for the first 20 years. Buyers who pass on their land or house acquired through the scheme will have to repay the financial intervention to the local authorities.
N-VA minister Ben Weyts has predicted legal challenges to the decree from Francophones.
